


And I Wandered Home Saying Your Name

by loonyBibliophile



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, artist!Leo Fitz, do you ever have an idea that just runs out of control, that's what this is, this is an art school au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-01
Updated: 2014-07-01
Packaged: 2018-02-07 00:10:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1877700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loonyBibliophile/pseuds/loonyBibliophile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All the way up until Fitz turned sixteen and his mother took ill, forcing him, his mother and his aunt to all move back to Scotland again, they were inseparable. Afraid of losing his mother, he’d shut Jemma out, letting their attempts to keep in touch peter out after a few months. And he’d never seen her again. </p><p>Until today. Sitting on his model stand, twisting her forever unruly hair up onto her head, so the lines of her neck would be clear to the students. True to form, he blurted something out before he had time to think it through. </p><p>"Jemma Simmons?!"</p>
            </blockquote>





	And I Wandered Home Saying Your Name

Leo Fitz loved figure drawing.Ever since he was old enough to attend the classes at his local uni back home, he’d loved the entire experience. The near silent studios, the only sounds ambient breathing and quiet music playing in the background. The dim lights, throwing shadows into stark relief under the spotlights by the model stand. The smell of paints and charcoal swirling together in the air. And most of all, the textures. The tooth of sketch paper under his fingers, and the sandy feeling of charcoal coating his hands. The rough grain of canvas and the soft smudge of oil paints being pushed around. 

As he walked into class that Friday morning, the model stand was still empty, as was the classroom, save for the teacher and one other very early student. he pulled an easel to the center of the room, right in front of the stand, and set his sketchbook on it. There was a charcoal pencil settled behind one ear, and he pushed the sleeves of his sweater of to his elbows. 

Slowly, the other students trickled into class, setting up easels and horses to draw or paint on. The teacher in an upper level figure course like this was really more of a supervisor, so Professor May stood silently in the corner, watching her students. Once they got to work she would circle the room and offer advice, but that was it. 

"Sorry I’m late!" a voice called from the doorway, bustling through in a mess of long brown hair. 

"You’re here exactly on time." the professor said evenly, just barely arching one brow. 

"Well, you know what they say, be five minutes early or you might as well be late." the voice said, half joking. Professor May gave a barely detectable nod of approval. 

Fitz wrinkled his nose. Something about that voice seemed familiar to him. Since he couldn’t place why, he simply assumed she’d modeled for a class he’d taken before and moved on with it. Until she sat down on the edge of the model stand and pulled her hair back into a messy bun. Instantly his mouth went dry. 

When Leo Fitz was ten years old, he’d moved to Sheffield, England after a messy divorce sent his mother into a spiraling depression. Both for her mental health and for financial stability, they’d left Scotland to live with his aunt. In the house next door, there’d been a girl his age. Jemma Simmons, who loved reading and writing as much as he loved drawing, quickly became Fitz’s best and only friend. She was quite content to sit in his room, curled up on his bed, and tell him about the book she was reading or an idea she had for a story while he drew anything from her to the shoes on the floor of his room. 

They were inseparable. Even after they moved up to secondary school, they were still attached at the hip. All the way up until Fitz turned sixteen and his mother took ill, forcing him, his mother and his aunt to all move back to Scotland again. Afraid of losing his mother, he’d shut Jemma out, letting their attempts to keep in touch peter out after a few months. And he’d never seen her again. 

Until today. Sitting on his model stand, twisting her forever unruly hair up onto her head, so the lines of her neck would be clear to the students. True to form, he blurted something out before he had time to think it through. 

"Jemma Simmons?!" he winced, covering his mouth at how loud his exclamation seemed in the near silent room. She glanced up, blinking like a deer in the headlights, and then her mouth fell open just slightly. 

"Dear lord. Leopold Fitz is that you?" she blinked again, tilting her head. 

Before they could continue their inevitably awkward conversation, Professor May gave them both a stern look and Simmons jumped onto the stand, immediately stripping out of her clothes and piling them on the corner of the stand. Fitz swallowed. Because the world was a cruel and unfair place, and his childhood best friend he hadn’t seen in five years was standing in a room full of people, including him, stark naked, and she was absolutely gorgeous. Really, he thought, it should be illegal to be that stunning, it has to be some sort of hazard. 

Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath and tried to clear his mind of who she was. Pulling the pencil from behind his ear, he looked at her and drew. By the end of the three hour session, when it was time for lunch, he had at least five pages of charcoal sketches, all different poses and different angles, and all of them unmistakably Jemma. he was so wrapped up in putting the finishing touches on the last one, he didn’t hear soft foot steps behind him.

"Wow." Jemma breathed from over his shoulder. Fitz jumped, startled, and turned to face her. She was standing just behind his shoulder, having pulled on a short robe, tied tied around her waist, and a pair of loose shorts. "Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to startle you. I just wanted to see how much your style had changed since we were children." 

"I.. er.. It’s fine. I’m jus’ jumpy, that’s all." he scrubbed at his neck nervously, smearing charcoal all over it in the process. 

"They’re beautiful. You were always good, but now you’re… amazing." she leaned awkwardly from one foot to the other, and Fitz thought for a moment how funny it was that he recognized her nervous ticks so easily after all those years away. 

"Thank you." he said with a terse nod. "I uh, I should eat. Since theres still two hours of class after this." 

"Right. Of course. Sorry…" she trailed of sheepishly and Fitz shook his head. 

"No, no uh, I’m just going out to the courtyard. You can come. If you want, I mean, I don’t mean to presume."

"Oh! Alright. My lunch is just in my bag so." she jerked a hand to the duffel bag on the floor by the stand and Fitz nodded, pulling his own lunch from his artbox and waiting for her before heading out of the door and towards the treelined section of tables outside. 

"So." he said, fiddling with the tab on a can of soda. 

"Yes. So indeed." she agreed, nodding and worrying a napkin between her fingers. 

"Been awhile." 

"I’d say so. Five years, isn’t it?"

"Something like that." 

"Is your mum alright?"

"Yeah, she pulled through. She has to use a walker sometimes, but she’s a stubborn one." 

"I’m glad. She was still sick when.. well when whatever happened to us happened." 

"Yeah… I know. It’s my fault. I sort of…. let everything fade off. Not that you did anything wrong, of course, I was just… well I was just me." 

"I thought it might have been something like that. But it’s my fault too. I should have tried harder to get you to respond." 

"It wouldn’t have worked." 

An awkward silence fell over them then, and in it Fitz could feel how different this was than the lunches they’d shared as school children. They’d often fallen into silence then, but it was always warm and easy, but this was cool and unpleasant, and he was suddenly overwhelmed by how very long five years was. 

"I missed you." she says quietly, staring at her half empty crisps packet. He’s surprised and not surprised at the same time that she admitted it first. While Jemma had always been better at feelings than he was, she was much worse at admitting weakness. 

"I missed you too." 

"Can we just… pretend the past five years never happened? Jump right back into being friends?" she wrapped her arms around her knees, and Fitz suddenly remembered a half a dozen nights of Jemma, exhausted and sad, hiding on his bedroom floor in that exact position because her parents were fighting again.

"I’m willing to try if you are." 

"Good." she gave him a smile and he couldn’t help but smile back. 

"So, are you still a writer?"

"Yes, of course! That’s actually why I’m here today. I needed some extra cash to be able to send a manuscript of mine out to publishers, and sitting for figure classes pays well and the hours are flexible." 

"I’m glad. That you’re writing, I mean. Also that you came here today, I suppose." 

"Thank you." her voice was warm. "I’m glad you’re still drawing too. You were always wonderful at it, Leo, but my god! You’re utterly amazing now. Those drawings of me are beautiful." 

"They wouldn’t be half as beautiful if they were of anyone else." he admits in a rush, immediately making a face. "Sorry, didn’t mean to say that…" Jemma flushed. 

"That’s alright. It was sweet."

"We should get back to class." 

"Yes, I suppose we should. But make sure to stick around after class for a moment, I want to exchange information, so we don’t lose track of each other again. If that’s alright, I mean." she stared down at her bare toes. 

"I’d like nothing better." he said honestly, before helping to her feet so they could head back to the room. Fitz spent the remainder of the class session on a single drawing, instead of moving from place to place like earlier. He paid special attention to detail, like the curve of her ribcage as it became the curve of her hip, and the way the tendrils of her hair, falling from their bun, wound themselves around her neck and ears. Most important of all was her face, so he made sure to get the light that shone in her eyes just right, and he almost wished he were painting, so he could capture the way her eyes glowed the color of warm honey in the light. Instead he settled for getting the curve of her lips, a small smile held safely in her cheeks, just so. Professor May had passed behind him a few times as he worked, always giving an approving nod or a slight sound of approval, or even once laying a hand on his shoulder and murmuring that he was doing a wonderful job. 

Before he knew it, the class was over, and people were milling around and looking at the other’s works. A few people commented on his, but he barely heard them, giving vague thank you’s in repsonse as he watched Jemma out her street clothes back on before approaching her and holding out his phone. 

"Here. We’ll swap, type your number in mine and I’ll type mine in yours." 

"Sounds like a plan." she said with a grin, accepting his phone and handing him hers in return. 

A month later, they were sitting in a pub, leaning on the bar as had somehow become their twice weekly tradition. Somehow, they’d fallen into friendship just as easily as they did the first go around. Jemma spent a great many evenings writing or proofreading her works while Fitz sketched her idly, using her as a model for his life drawing homework assignments. The drawing of her he’d done in class was framed and in her living room back at her flat. 

"You know." she said suddenly, taking a sip of her beer "There’s a character based on you in my book." she turned to face him and smiled, swiping a smudge of charcoal from his cheek with careful fingers. 

"Oh really?"

"Yep. I actually started this story not long after you moved, though it’s changed a lot since then. But your character was stubborn and he made it through any number of permutations and drafts." 

"I used to draw you. Every night before I went to bed. I was afraid I’d forget what you looked like. i must have a dozen sketchbooks with drawings of your face in them. I even tried to imagine what you’d look like older." 

"How accurate were you?"

"Didn’t do you a lick of justice. Not that I thought you’d be ugly, I just never made you anywhere near as gorgeous as you actually turned out to be." 

"Your character is the love interest. When I started it as a kid, I had this crazy idea that I’d grow up and publish it and you’d read it and you’d just.. you’d know it was meant to be you and you’d find me and everything would be alright again." 

"You and your fairytales." Fitz chided affectionately, nudging his shoulder into hers. 

"Well, I was right about one thing." she said with a shrug.

"And what’s that?"

"You did find me eventually." 

"Yeah. Yeah I suppose I did." 

They never noticed they were leaning into each other, but suddenly they were kissing and there wasn’t an inch of space between them. he ran his hands through her hair the way he’d dreamt of doing a thousand time, and just like with the countless drawings of her face, the fantasy did not do the reality justice. 

"Well, that happened." he said with a chuckle after they’d pulled apart, their foreheads still leaning together. 

"Yeah. Yeah I suppose it did." she answered with a cheeky smile. Fitz wound a lock of her hair around his finger, shaking his head. 

A year later, ‘In The End’ by new author Jemma Simmons was flying off of store shelves all over England, and America followed soon after. The acknowledgements, after the numerous family and friends she wanted to to mention, read as follows. 

_And perhaps most importantly, for the real life Bartholomew Drew, without whom this books would have a very different ending, as he appeared just in time to remind me that, in the end, the important people will always find you._

However, Fitz’s favorite part of her book was not the story, as heavily inspired by them as it was, or the allusion to him in the acknowledgments, or even his byline on the front cover for supplying the cover art and chapter illustrations. it was the About the Author on the inside back cover. 

_Breakout author Jemma Simmons debuts with her first novel ‘In the End’, inspired in part by events in her life. Simmons lives in a small flat in London, with a cat named Henrietta and her fiance, Leoold Fitz, whom she credits as not only her greatest inspiration, but her best friend. Fitz, an artist in his own rights, provided the artwork for ‘In the End’._

In addition to the proper author photo above the bio, where Jemma was dressed neatly, the publisher had included a slightly larger photo underneath the text. Jemma was wearing a sundress Fitz was always especially fond of, red and lightweight and flowing. Fitz had his arm around her waist, and every inch of him was smeared with paint. Henrietta wound around their feet, and they were both laughing. 

It was the most beautiful picture Fitz had ever seen. 

**Author's Note:**

> So I had this idea for Fitz being an art student that lost touch with Simmons until she was the model in one of his classes, and then it spiraled out of control and this happened. It's 1:30 am and I have no excuse. I hope you enjoyed it though! The title is from Oviedo by Blind Pilot 
> 
> Also, this is unbeta'ed and it's nearly 2am so sorry for any typos.


End file.
